Solution Grove

Lectures on OpenACS from Australia [pumptheory.com]

Mark Aufflick of PumpTheory out of Australia has collect a series of lectures and presentations on OpenACS development he has done for the Web Engineering Group at the University of Sydney.

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11:44 AM, 30 Jun 2005 by Caroline Meeks Permalink | Comments (0)

CIO Magazine on the ROI of Open Source [www.cio.com]

This is a brief common sense article on open source for large organizations. One of the lesser made points they bring up is:

“Finally, take the entire organization into account. While a specific open-source project may not offer great ROI, the cost benefits of pioneer applications often materialize downstream in later projects that are able to adopt the open-source package. Even if you purchase enterprise licenses for your commercial products so that your marginal cost for a new application is effectively zero, keep in mind that someday, when those licenses are up for renewal, that marginal cost may be much higher.”

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10:29 PM, 29 Jun 2005 by Caroline Meeks Permalink | Comments (0)

Client side java course creator [openacs.org]

Nima Mazloumi of Mannheim University in Germany is working on an Open Source a Course Editor that will integrate with dotLRN.

This is being discussed on the OpenACS boards.

Current work by Solution Grove and others in the .LRN community have been expanding our Learning Objects Repository to meet the needs of organizations that are looking to create and manage large numbers of courses. The LORS-Central work Solution Grove did for PBS Teacherline was explicitly to meet the needs of delivering and managing many slightly customized versions of the same material delivered to many different classes. (E.G. teacher training courses that are slightly different from state to state to accommodate local standards)

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02:42 PM, 23 Jun 2005 by Caroline Meeks Permalink | Comments (0)

Lessons from the KSG Class

I am at the KSG class referenced in the recent case study. This session is on project management.

Here is a brief exerpt:

Seven Deadly Sins of Project Management from Gopal Kapur

1. Half Baked Ideas
2. Inadequate sponsorship
3. Inadequate due dillegence
4. Poorly trained project manager
5. Lack of a robust process
6. Not taking project vital signs
7. No Project portfolio management

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05:24 PM, 20 Jun 2005 by Caroline Meeks Permalink | Comments (0)

Case Study: Harvard's E-Government Executive Education (3E) Project at the John F. Kennedy School of Government [dotlrn.org]

The .LRN Consortium has just released a case study on Solution Grove's client the E-Government Executive Education (3E) Project use of .LRN at the John F. Kennedy School of Government with the support from IBM and local vendors. The case study describes using .LRN in innovative ways including integrating weblogs into .LRN, administering pre- and post-class surveys, creating a custom resource library, maintaining contact with graduates, and more.

In the case study Dr. Jerry Mechling, the project's founder and lead says, ".LRN provided a huge head start toward what we wanted, plus support for things we didn't originally anticipate. It feels like a big house we're still moving into, and we're discovering all sorts of useful spaces even as we get comfortable in the main living quarters." Janet Caldow from IBM adds, "as a 3E Charter Sponsor, we made a big bet, and .LRN has paid off for realizing the Compass vision. We got what we wanted on time and on budget, it's scaling nicely, and we're proud to have IBM's name on it."

Please read the 3E case study.

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10:24 PM, 15 Jun 2005 by Caroline Meeks Permalink | Comments (0)